Impertinence
by Bryon Nightshade
Summary: X1 prequel. One-shot. Question: How is a humble archaeologist able to create a new breed of robot? Answer: he also happens to be a world-class roboticist. Question: why is a world-class roboticist digging around in the dirt? Answer: well... it's complicated.


_Author's note: to my regular readers, this is a one-off story that I wrote on the side. It will not affect the posting schedule of _A Heavy Load to Bear_. Mega Man X and the other characters and situations in this story are copyright Capcom._

* * *

Dr. Cain sighed. A note of wheeze betrayed itself in the sigh, much to his annoyance. Dr. Cain was younger than he looked, and much younger than he felt. Now was the wrong time for age to make its move on him—now, when the world was finally beginning to turn. He had to push through his weariness.

"Dr. Cain?"

Dr. Cain turned from his monitor. "Oh, X," he said. "I suppose you're done looking at the reploid data, then?"

"Yes. So far, so good. The first few are faring well. Their neural pathways are intact, their cores are stable, and their performance is within tolerance. Their behavioral subroutines are different, of course, but we expected that—learning robots learn differently. None of the variations are more than two sigmas out."

Dr. Cain sank back into his chair as if the weight of ages had gripped him. "It's done, then," he murmured. "We've done it. Finally… it took us a hundred years, but we've finally exorcised Dr. Light."

He'd meant the words only for himself. He hadn't expected X's hearing to be so acute. The robot frowned slightly, then stepped closer. "Dr. Cain? What… are your feelings about father?"

"Fath—oh, Dr. Light, you mean? Hm…"

X's eyes were earnest and innocent. He didn't seem to understand the magnitude of his question. The words had sent Dr. Cain spiraling into the darkness of memory.

"Well…"

* * *

"…And which person did you choose as your hero?"

"Dr. Light is my hero! He gave us robots and made the world a better place! Someday I want to build robots, too, just like he did!"

* * *

"Trick or treat!"

"Well, that's quite a costume, young man! Who are you supposed to be?"

"Dr. Light!"

"Dr. Light, huh? Ooh, scary!"

"It's not supposed to be _scary_. I didn't choose him because I thought he was _scary_. He's my favorite person in the whole world, and I wanted to honor him. We can't forget the people who really matter!"

"Uh… okay… have some candy."

"Thanks, mister!"

* * *

"Well, looks like you were accepted to the school you wanted—and on a full scholarship, too! Why, it won't be long before we're calling you Dr. Cain!"

"I hope not. I can't wait to get started. I've been waiting for this my whole life!"

"Heh. You're full of vigor, kid, that's good. I suppose that's true, huh? Your whole life?"

"Of course."

"Now, it doesn't mean as much, seeing as your "whole life" is only eighteen years at this point… but you get points for sincerity."

"I don't see why my being young should make a difference. I remember you saying that I was the sharpest student you'd had in ages."

"I didn't say that to you. How did you hear that?"

"Er…"

"Watch yourself, kid. Yeah, you are the sharpest student I had in ages. But you're as liable to cut yourself. Have fun in college. I really hope for the best for you, there. Just… keep your options open, okay?"

"I don't understand."

"This is the part where you nod and say, 'okay', and the meeting ends."

"Okay."

"Alright. Next!"

* * *

"Mr. Cain, when your master's thesis package reached my desk, I'll admit I was astounded. You completed the bachelor's program in three years, and the master's program in under two, even counting lab time and internship time."

"Yes, sir."

"Hm. But the quality of this thesis is extremely high. Your mastery of the technical aspects of robotics is exceptional."

"Thank you, sir."

"There won't be any problem with you getting your degree."

"I wasn't expecting any."

"Any questions, young man?"

"Actually, yes. I was told that master's theses that were highly graded could be submitted for publication in the various journals, courtesy of the university."

"…and?"

"Well, you yourself said this was a high quality thesis—an extremely high quality thesis, wasn't it? So… will you be submitting it for publication?"

"No."

"Huh? Why not?"

"Well, I just don't know of any that would publish it."

"I… I don't understand."

"When you were so graciously accepting my compliments, you didn't notice the way I worded part of it. You have exceptional mastery of the _technical aspects_ of robotics. There's more to the discipline than that."

"In that case, I recommend you put a course in the catalogue teaching the rest."

"Very funny. You're not winning my good graces, Mr. Cain."

"Give me my diploma and we'll call it even."

* * *

"Thank you, Mr. Cain, for submitting such an elegant proposal. We're going to have to modify it a bit before it goes into practice, but rest assured, we will look into it!"

"Modify? How? You can apply this right now and the energy efficiency of every new robot will be 8% better. That means smaller reserves but more output, saving materials and mass for other tasks, with all sorts of cascading benefits…"

"Yes, yes, I know, I read your proposal thoroughly. Very cleverly done!"

"I'm beginning to think people use compliments as a means of ignoring me."

"It's called 'tact', Mr. Cain, a skill you would do well to master yourself. I'm sure that to a master of academia such as yourself it would seem trivial to apply this change, but the real world is not so simple. So we will look into your proposal, identify the modifications necessary to implement it, and get back to you."

"But… I don't understand. What modifications could you possibly make to it? Did someone else… no, if someone else got here first, you wouldn't be leading me on like this, and I would have read about it in the journals. So… argh, the only modifications you could make… would make it worse! I don't understand!"

"Are you done, Mr. Cain?"

"Tell me why. Please, that's all I ask!"

"Control yourself, child. This is not a field for those who lack control."

* * *

"Rejected! Rejected! It makes no sense! On what grounds could they possibly… gah! There's no way they said no on technical grounds. It was perfect! Maybe… maybe with a little more clout behind me… yes, time to head back to the classroom… maybe with another piece of paper and a few more years, they'll be forced to see the truth…"

* * *

"Dr. Cain, your doctorate took a most unusual form. I've never seen someone try to break down an entire discipline before, practitioners, theoreticians, and the rest all in one fell swoop. It's quite breathtaking."

"I trust you were able to overcome your surprise and judge me on my merits."

"Your merits? Your merits, you say? Mr. Cain, it seems that your primary 'merit' is arrogance."

"Am I wrong?"

"Mr. Cain…"

"Am I wrong?"

"No, you are not wrong. The science of robotics has improved by approximately one percent per year since the death of the great Dr. Light. Your research and meta-analysis are without flaw, and are certainly enough to get you your doctorate. There, are you happy?"

"Well, no, actually. Because it begs the question: why? Even the most lackadaisical survey of the discipline shows ample room for improvement. Other areas of technology are improving day-by-day. Why not this one?"

"You are a strange man, Mr. Cain. You bring up Dr. Light on a few occasions, always with great reverence, yet you seem determined to trample all over his legacy."

"Trample—what? What do you mean? No, I only seek to honor Dr. Light! I want to continue on with his work!"

"Do you think you're smarter than Dr. Light?"

"Certainly not! The man pushed robotics from a fringe industrial science to the forefront of our way of life. His abilities were unequaled, before or since."

"Yet you believe you can improve on his designs? You think you can outperform him? You think you're cleverer, or more creative?"

"I've never said or implied that!"

"Oh, yes you did. That's what this is. This whole doctorate thesis is your way of saying that Dr. Cain is smarter than Dr. Light because he can improve on Dr. Light's designs."

"That's… not…"

"I see this didn't occur to you. You don't have much self-awareness, do you, Mr. Cain? I hope you acquire some before you start calling yourself "doctor"."

* * *

"To the editor of _Robotics Quarterly_, thank you for publishing my tribute to Dr. Light. I am also submitting an article to you concerning an improvement to circuitry designs… oh, who am I kidding. They won't publish it. It's too radical, huh, as if a five percent improvement is radical. Oh no, watch out, five percent less heat generation will really break the mold!

"But of course they'll publish the tribute piece. Of course they will! That's what robotics journals are for, aren't they? For fawning over the bodies of dead men. Ugh. And here I am, bowing to the system, playing the game. God, what are we all doing?"

* * *

"Are there any questions for Mr. Young before we convene for consideration? … Er… alright, Dr. Cain, the floor is yours."

"Just one question for the candidate. Mr. Young, let's flip through your proposal… ah, there. Page twenty-three. Let's see, you put two capacitors in here in parallel. You know, of course, that Higurashi's new line of capacitors have increased capacitance, don't you?"

"Yes, the ones I put in there are Higurashi models."

"Yes, yes I see that… but you could have used just one higher-capacity model here, couldn't you have?"

"Um… well…"

"You could have, couldn't you?"

"Well… yes…"

"Dr. Cain, that's quite enough."

"Sir, with respect, I'd like an answer to my question. Mr. Young, you could have saved space and weight with a single capacitor and eased repairs to boot. Why didn't you make the obviously better choice?"

"Because… the original design had two…"

"I know that, Mr. Young, but we have better technology now, don't we?"

"That's enough, Dr. Cain."

"Why do we shackle ourselves to old ways?"

"I said that's enough, Dr. Cain!"

"There's no benefit to it! It's downright stupid. Why would we refuse to move forward?"

"I was told to, Dr. Cain! I was told my project wouldn't be approved if I deviated too much!"

"And that's where we went wrong!"

"Dr. Cain!"

"So why do we insist on stagnation? Why do we cling to it? WHAT ARE WE AFRAID OF?!"

"DR. CAIN! You will leave the room now!"

"I… yes. Yes."

* * *

"You didn't honestly expect to remain on the faculty after that, did you?"

"Well… no. I just… couldn't stop myself. I was so angry. Back to the drawing board, I suppose. The improvements I've been allowed to make have given me enough income to keep body and soul together, so I'm not hurting for now."

"You liar. Every moment you're not working on robots you're dying a little inside."

"Which means I've been dying since I got my bachelor's. Want another glass?"

* * *

"Good afternoon, what can I—oh. It's you."

"Afternoon, Greg."

"I have nothing to say to you, Dr. Cain."

"Why so formal, Greg? That's not very friendly."

"It sounds like I wasn't formal enough. United Robotics Industries has nothing to say to Dr. Cain. If Dr. Cain wishes to enter into technology agreements, he can apply…"

"Greg, we've known each other longer than that, haven't we? Cut the crap and speak like a human being."

"You'd better not make me put on my lawyer-face, then. Why are you calling? You've never been someone who calls just to chat."

"Relax, I don't want to start anything new."

"Something old, then? Let me bring up your file."

"No files, no records, nothing like that."

"I'm _really_ suspicious now."

"I was hoping to have a talk with you about economics."

"Pursuing yet another degree, are you?"

"Ha! I do have a bit of a learning habit."

"It wasn't that funny."

"Humor's relative, Greg. So… supply and demand still works, right?"

"As far as I know."

"And comparative advantage?"

"As much as that idea ever worked."

"And everyone loves the Laffer curve as an idea even though no one's ever successfully applied it, right?"

"Sure."

"Okay. Just making sure the bedrocks of economics still apply. I've been bedeviled by an economics problem and I thought I'd better check to make sure I'm grasping the basics."

"What's your problem?"

"Well, I was studying a very competitive industry. The companies were well-entrenched. They knew every trick in the book when it came to marketing and business practices and driving down costs and maximizing profit. In many ways they were exemplars of good business. But they had an anomaly that I just couldn't account for."

"What's that?"

"They never improved their product. Improvements were there to be made, improvements that would have given any of the companies a decisive edge in product quality, but the companies focused exclusively on price wars and marketing in their business strategies. I figured, I must be missing something."

"You're making me put on my lawyer-face, Dr. Cain."

"Greg! I know you! We've played "Monopoly" together and you won the actual shirt off my back, somehow. I heard you fired your own secretary because she was too wasteful with office supplies."

"I was wondering who gave you this number."

"What's going on, Greg? Something is holding you back. You hate it, I know, but it's strong enough to put you in a cage. What's the cage?"

"Have you ever applied for a commercial license for manufacturing robots?"

"No."

"That's right, you were always in it for 'the good of mankind'. Try it, some time. Take a real close look at the fine print. It'll be illuminating if you can find a powerful enough magnifying glass. Why, you might see similar language in your college's educational license. I'm hanging up, now. Please don't call back."

* * *

"...'pursuant to section 17 of the binding agreement…' ugh, stab my eyes out with a fork… 'the applicant agrees to submit a cross-reviewed document with the design's GRR…' what's GRR again? Gross robot rating, whatever that means. '…with the design's GRR, fully explicated by system, module, and sub-module, in sufficient detail as required by appendix C. …' no way am I reading _that_… 'for approval by the RRC, IWRC, and GRCC, in that order, per the procedures in…' where's that key? Let's see… Robotics Research Committee, and… Industry-Wide Robotics Committee, and… Government Robotics Coordination Committee…

"What the _hell_?"

* * *

"So tell me, Dean, how do I get a spot on the Robotics Research Committee?"

"Why the sudden interest, Dr. Cain?"

"Well, it sounds interesting enough. I don't really know what it does. If I figured out what the application requirements are, it'll tell me whether or not I should bother."

"Don't worry about it."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You'll never be a part of the Committee."

"Why not?"

"You'd hate the work."

"Could I judge that for myself?"

"Dr. Cain, I accepted your application to do research at this university even knowing your reputation. I find your presence stimulating and you're a motivating presence for young roboticists. I like to think I know a thing or two about you. Take it from me: you would hate the work of the Robotics Research Committee."

"My reputation? What reputation do I bring?"

"No one's ever called you DW2?"

"Not to my face."

"Doctor Wily two-point-oh."

"Doctor… no. No. Dean, that's not funny."

"Your face right now is a little funny."

"But… no! Dr. Wily was a maniac! He didn't just want to build better robots, he wanted to rule the world! He wanted to force people to accept him as the smartest of all!"

"That last bit is the similarity people see. I'm not saying I agree, Dr. Cain, not by any stretch. I'm just saying that there's a stigma with going too fast in this discipline."

"See, I don't understand that at all. Did you know that even the lubricating oil we use is outdated? Our robots use some specific oils that the refiners make only for our industry. They couldn't sell it to anyone else, like the hovercraft manufacturers. They've got better-engineered oils for them."

"Huh. I didn't know that."

"Even a trivial change like using better oil is 'going too fast'. It didn't used to be this way!"

"I know. Incidentally, that's why you'd hate working on the RRC."

"They're the brakes, aren't they?"

"They're the brakes. Along with the other two committees, of course. The RRC regulates academia, the IWRC manages commercial robotics, and the GRCC oversees both."

"So the one industry that has brought such stupendous success to mankind, that's made our lives easier and more productive, is the one most regulated—the one most strangulated."

"Yes. You sound surprised."

"Because it should be the other way! Robots are everywhere. If we improve them, the pass-along effects would be tremendous. Why did I become a roboticist if not for that?"

"I couldn't tell you that."

"I know, Dean, I know."

* * *

"Dr. Cain?"

"Why, if it isn't Mr. John Hubert, editor-in-chief of _Robotics International_! How can I help you?"

"Don't be disingenuous. You know why I called."

"Would it be about the article I sent you?"

"Of course. It was hard to believe it was written by the same person who wrote such a moving tribute to Dr. Light in _Robotics Quarterly_."

"I thought about that, which is one reason why I sent it to you and not RQ. RQ could hardly print it and look consistent. You have a competitive advantage there."

"So you didn't send it to RQ. That's good. Dr. Cain, let me give you a piece of advice, just between you and me. Don't send this to the other journals. It doesn't reflect well on you."

"Mr. Hubert, what do you think of when you think of Dr. Light?"

"I think of a great man who left us an astounding array of designs and technologies."

"That's only partially correct. He was a scientist and engineer—a member of a discipline. A man can't be greater than the field in which he works."

"Dr. Light can."

"Do you think he wanted us to stop? Do you think he saw himself as the end-all be-all? That's absurd! He was working on new technologies right to the moment of his death. He certainly didn't see robotics as a static thing. Why should we?"

"You're not really correct, there. He was a spent force after the end of the Wily Wars. He withdrew from public life, and was dead before he spoke again."

"No one knows what he was doing in those days. It would have been totally out of character for him to be working on nothing. But it's not the point. The point is that he never settled. He was always moving forward. Those designs people adore—it's not as if they sprung fully-formed from his head. They took hard work and sweat and constant improvement and modification. They're iterative. Even the prized Mega Man was tinkered with incessantly."

"What's your point?"

"It makes no logical sense for us to stop moving forward in the name of a man who never did!"

"And that's why you want me to publish an article defacing Dr. Light."

"I'm just pointing out some mistakes he made, and showing how the designs even of his day could have been better. The idea is to show how he was able to learn from his errors, and how we could do the same."

"You're trying to convince me that an article criticizing Dr. Light is somehow complimenting him. It won't work."

"Okay, fine. I'm trying to show that we should appreciate him as a scientist, not a prophet. People have built him up into more than he is, and now it's holding us back. If we're to truly appreciate Dr. Light the man, we have to tear down Dr. Light the edifice."

"Well, good luck, because you'll be fighting that battle alone."

"Come on, John—John? John? _Kuso_!"

* * *

"Twenty years I've been a roboticist, now. Twenty years and robotics technology has gone nowhere. Why, I bet that if I could find a vintage Dr. Light model, I could swap it in for a present-day robot and no one would be able to tell.

"And Dr. Light is everywhere! Gah, no one likes the man better than me, but we're doing it all wrong. The way forward isn't adoration, it's emulation. We shouldn't copy his works, we should copy his practice—and that was to push the boundaries of science to create something radically new.

"Something… radically new…

"Okay, Dr. Cain, slow down a bit. Drink your drink, settle yourself.

"Oi! That's the good stuff. Better. Okay…

"Something radically new. Forget this incremental improvement stuff. I've spent far too much time and effort trying, and it won't work. The system's too firmly entrenched. So… let's upend the system. Let's make something so different that the old rules don't apply anymore.

"Yeah… I like where this is going.

"But how? There's no way something like this would pass muster with the Restrictions on Robotics Committees or whatever they are. They won't grant me a research license. That'd be like giving me the power to fire them. Never in a thousand years. So… either try or convince the Dean to let me do it under the university's license… or…

"No, I can't endanger the Dean. He's helped me out too much, given me too much. I can't ask him to do anything more for me. And if it does all go up in smoke, I won't bring him down with me. He'll be able to honestly say he had no idea what I was up to.

"Good. This is a good plan. I'll work on it more tomorrow. One last drink, and then bed."

* * *

"It can be done. I know it can.

"Just keep telling yourself that.

"A robot can think and feel like a human being. It's all just electricity, right? All just neurons. Well, and chemicals, and glands, and who-knows what else… metaphysics has never been my strong suit. But it can be done.

"I feel close, even though I know I'm not, even though I know the last prototype slipped into catatonia and the one before that burned itself out and the one before that never woke up.

"It can be done."

* * *

"One year in and no breakthrough. I'm learning lots of things that don't work, but… oh, so many variables! How tenuous a thing is consciousness! What a difference there is between even the most advanced programs and a being that's essentially unprogrammed! What a difference there is between a world where things exist and a world that is somewhere that things could exist!

"Is this how Dr. Light felt when he was building those first few robots? Facing nothing but a wall of failure and a life of ignominy? At least he had a fellow to commiserate with. I'm so alone.

"And my robot won't… wake… up!"

* * *

"Hey, who are all of you? What are you doing here?"

"Dr. Cain?"

"Yes, that's—don't touch that! Stop it, all of you!"

"On behalf of the Robotics Regulatory Department, I am confiscating all technologies and prototypes found here, in accordance with…"

"NO! Stop, you've got to stop!"

"…significant legal and criminal penalties…"

"I was close, I know I was! I was close!"

"…can be used against you in a court of law…"

"You can't do this, not when I've come so far, not when… don't! Please, not that!"

"…additional charges may be levied at a future date…"

"Please, let him go, I'll do anything, take me but leave him…"

"Thank you for your cooperation. Bob, make sure the stuff gets tagged properly. The morons back at evidence won't know what to keep and what to destroy."

"NO! Let him go! He's alive, damn you all, HE'S ALIVE! Don't… NOOO!"

"That's pretty much it. Hey, unofficially, you're the guy that wrote that Tribute to Dr. Light, aren't you?"

"…huh? Uh… yes…"

"I always liked that piece. Shame things had to come to this. Have a nice day."

* * *

"I can't do anything, Dr. Cain. My hands are tied. You went around me instead of through me and now I'm powerless."

"…I was just trying to protect you…"

"And now I can't protect you. There's intense pressure to strip you of your degrees, did you know that?"

"Augh, just kill me then! What am I if not… if not…"

"And I'll fight with all my power to keep that from happening. Degrees are mine to issue or rescind and the rest can go to hell. But that's my limit. That's all I can do. You really made a royal mess this time, and I can't help you clean it up."

"I know. I just… I knew they'd never accept what I was doing, so I had to… take a chance. I had to try."

"It was only a matter of time before you were caught."

"Huh?"

"In all the years you've been a roboticist you'd never gone more than a few months without trying to get published. You were famous for that. When you went silent, the editorial staffs thought you were dead. I had to field a lot of phone calls saying yes, you were still alive. But a change like that… it made people suspicious, and I couldn't say what you were up to, because you never talked to me, _to me_, damn you."

"…it would have worked…"

"What's that?"

"If I'd have had… I don't know, a few more weeks… I could have done it… I know I could have…"

"Could have done what?"

"Made robots people. Let them think and feel the way we do."

"Have you completely lost it, Dr. Cain?"

"Not even slightly. I could see that it was possible, even how it might work. I was so close. Or maybe I'm just kidding myself. I'd thought I was close before and it had never worked out."

"You must really want people to think of you as Dr. Wily two-point-oh."

"No… I was… I was trying to be like Dr. Light… taking a science and throwing it forward by brilliance and force of will alone…"

"But that's the whole problem, don't you see?"

"…huh?"

"What happened when Dr. Light invented incredibly capable robots? Change, that's what. Some of it was good, a lot of it was good. But war came, also, and wars are bad. Criminals using robots as their tools are bad. Messy issues like control and power and Asimovian law came up. Some people were downright terrified and wanted all robots destroyed, did you think of that? And Dr. Light represented all of that. He represented all of robotics, its best and its worst.

"Governments were under immense pressure to put things under control, but they had to do so without taking robots away. People were petrified of more changes to come. So government did what government does best: it kicked the can. It froze the situation. And we—roboticists, that is—went along with it."

"So we… we worship at the temple of Light… because we're _afraid of him_?"

"Deathly afraid. It's taken us a while to finally figure out how to control Light-era robotics. Now we're keeping it like that because we're terrified of what the future might bring. I'm not proud to be a part of it. I know we'll have to advance sooner or later, we can't not. That's why I sponsored you for so long. I thought you might be the one to help challenge the order. But you did it stupidly, and now we've both lost everything."

"…one percent a year… allowed improvement in… GRR…"

"That's the agreement, between us, the government, and industry. No more than one percent improvement, gross, to any particular design per calendar year. And I'll tell you, there are years we don't even hit that target. All very deliberate, all to keep control, all out of fear."

"And honoring Dr. Light is part of the PR of it."

"Not just PR. For one thing, there is a very real stigma. The last roboticist to openly try to one-up Dr. Light was Dr. Wily, and no one wants to risk that association. But more importantly, this reverence gets ahead of the problem. It keeps up-and-coming roboticists firmly inside the box. Except for you, of course. You had your own ideas on what Dr. Light really was and how to honor him. Probably the right ones, too. But not the ones that have been endorsed by your profession."

"Damn my profession."

"I sympathize completely, Dr. Cain. I actually admire you. I didn't have the courage or strength to buck the system, and you did. If there was anything I could do, I would. I won't even be able to keep you at the university, you know that."

"I know."

"But you'll still have your degrees, so you'll keep your dignity. And you'll still have your patents, so you'll have a living."

"What for?"

"None of that, Dr. Cain."

* * *

"Damn the gub'ment… an' damn the RRC an' the rest of 'em… an' damn, damn, damn Dr. Light…"

_You're talking to the bottle again._

"Am I?"

_Yes. You'd better get to sleep._

"I guess I'd better go sleep."

_Yes._

* * *

"Well, Dr. Cain, I must admit that I was very impressed with your master's thesis. My colleagues, as well."

"You're too kind."

"I think you'll find paleontology to be a less… politicized discipline than robotics."

"That's what I was hoping for."

"Really, the only question I had for you relates to your title. Why would you, so late in life, change your profession from robotics to paleontology?"

"Late in life? Oh, I'm not so much older than you."

"True, but the fact remains, you're more than double the age of our typical graduate student."

"But that has its advantages, too. I trust you reviewed the grant proposal I included with my thesis?"

"I did."

"How many twenty-something grad students could whip together something like that so easily?"

"You make no mean point there. You still haven't answered my question, though."

"Let's say that I maxed out on robotics. I'd learned everything I was going to learn, and had done as much as I was going to do. A new field to work in will do me a world of good. I think you'll be quite pleased with the quality of my work."

"Your research does seem quite thorough."

"I assure you, it's been _very_ thorough."

"I won't guarantee you anything, but I've seen worse proposals than yours picked up. In the meantime, let me be the first to welcome you as a colleague."

"Thank you very much."

* * *

"I found it, I found it, I found it, I found it! Ha ha ha! Dr. Light, you old son of a bitch, I _knew_ you were working on something before you died! I knew it! No one else believed it, no one else was willing to look, but I was, and I tracked you down at last!

"Oh, there's so much to do. Let's see. I'll need to do a bit of embezzlement with my research funds, but if I write into my patent proposals that the university gets the title and all the profits, I think they'll forgive me. And I'll have to write into my research journal that finding this place was a complete surprise, which should be plausible enough. Then there's smuggling the right equipment down here… accessing my backup files, the ones those buffoons from the Robotics Regulatory Department missed… what a bunch of morons, so sloppy, didn't even check my data history for copies… preparing the media blitz… enlisting the university on my side, I won't make that mistake again…

"And, of course, comprehending and copying whatever it was that Dr. Light left us, using skills I haven't exercised in five years. Simple!

"Now for some celebratory champ... no. No. I can't go into that place again. Water will have to do."

* * *

"Mark this journal entry for deletion. I need the official entries to tell a different story. I need them to be presentable. But at the same time… I need to say something.

"I feel myself humbled all over again by Dr. Light's genius. In the last days of his life, he was able to make yet another revolution in robotics. I imagined something like this was possible, and comparing my work to his, I wasn't too far off from the solution—but he actually pulled it off.

"This robot—no, too demeaning, android—this android he created, that he named X… he contains solutions to problems I hadn't even found yet. His core and programming are well beyond anything I ever built. Why, with as slow as robotics have advanced since Dr. Light's death, his own final creation constitutes a leap forward for the discipline, a full century later!

"Unbelievable.

"Presenting this to the public at large is going to be tricky, delicate… but I think I can break the charade, now. This over-reverence for Dr. Light can't survive a shock of this magnitude. All I need to do is prove that I can replicate the android and the Committees will be proven obsolete. Dr. Cain could never hope to break down the House of Light. Only Light could break down the House of Light. And whether he meant to or not, he left behind just the tool to do it.

"I wonder if X knows how important he is."

* * *

"Dr. Cain?"

"Hm?" The human shook his head as he returned to the present. "Sorry, X, did you say something?"

"Are you alright? You became unresponsive there. I was afraid something had happened to you."

_I bet you were,_ Dr. Cain thought, and the notion made him unreasonably happy. "You are such a kind soul," he said.

X frowned, but then shook his head as if to clear the thought away. "One metaphysical discussion at a time, please," he said.

"Oh, right," Dr. Cain said with a chuckle. "You had asked what I thought of Dr. Light. It's… complicated."

"That's all? 'It's complicated'?"

The disappointment in X's voice sent embarrassment coursing through Dr. Cain. He searched for a way to explain. "Hm… X, how would you describe "yellow" to a man blind from birth?"

X's brow creased as he worked on the problem. Even knowing why he'd asked the question, Dr. Cain found himself wondering how X would respond. "I don't think I could," X said at last. "Physically speaking, 'yellow' is the result of visible light waves within a certain frequency band being reflected by a surface that absorbs other frequencies. That still wouldn't help me describe it, because that's merely how 'yellow' is created, not what it is, not the quality of yellow. That description leaves it indistinguishable from red or blue. Without the frame of reference of sight, it's all arbitrary." He looked hopefully at Dr. Cain. "Was that an adequate answer?"

"Very thorough and cogent," Dr. Cain said with a chuckle. "X, you have the capacity to experience the full range of human emotions. The depth of your ability to feel and interact can't be measured, but from what I've seen, it's profound. All you lack is experience.

"That experience gap is what makes it so hard to answer your question. Emotions are complicated matters, you see. While I could describe to you all the things I've felt towards Dr. Light, it would sound nonsensical."

"I do not doubt you," X said politely, "but if experience is what I need, then perhaps you can help provide some? Perhaps you could help give me some perspective?"

Dr. Cain sighed. "I have admired Dr. Light, and reviled him. I have loved him and hated him, envied him and emulated him. At times I've felt like I was a slave to him, at others like he empowered me. Sometimes all at once."

X's eyes were wide open as he tried to take it all in. "So… it's complicated."

"Very."

"It sounds awfully confusing."

"It is."

"How much of your processor time is taken up with emotional inputs like that?"

Dr. Cain chuckled. "Humans generally aren't as self-aware as you are, X. We can't quantify things like that even when we think about it, which we usually don't. Suffice to say, Dr. Light was dead long before I was born, but no one has been more central to my life."

X nodded slowly. "Do you think I'll be like that?"

"I hope not."

"Why?"

"It's a terrible thing to be bound so tightly to the past. I wish more for you."

X thought that over. "Why?"

Dr. Cain smiled to himself. "Let's just say I have a personal investment in your fate," he said. "Now, let's go take a look at your baby brothers."

He walked towards the reploid testing lab. X followed in his footsteps and stumbled over his analogies.

* * *

_End_


End file.
